The exercises in this book will help you master more than 100 Chinese characters (and more than200 words) including those that you would need to know in order to achieve level 1 proficiency on the 中小学生汉语考试 (YCT), a test of Chinese language skills for elementary and middle school students whose first language is not Chinese.

The lessons build your vocabulary one character at a time and include practice sentences and phrases that use a variety of grammar patterns. For example: 一 one
一个。 One (of something)
一个人。 One person.
一个小人。 A/One small person.
十一个小人。 Eleven small people.
十一个小女人。 Eleven small women.
十一个女人很小。 Eleven women are very small.
二十一个女人很小。 Twenty-one women are very small.
And so on.

As each new character is introduced you will be shown how it is written (the stroke order), the traditional (long) form if any, and the separable components of that character. This will help you learn to decompose, recognize, and remember the characters. Finally, the activity sections and reading comprehension exercises will help you remember the meanings of the characters and vocabulary through spaced repetition. When you finish this book you will know a little more than 26 percent of the characters you will encounter in any given text on average.